Hunters against the ban on horse meat consumption: the horse is not a pet animal

Hands off the horse, at least as we have always known it. Taking the field against the proposed law 'Regulations for the protection of equines and their recognition as pets' presented by Michela Vittoria Brambilla (Noi Moderati) and president of Lidaa (Italian League for the Defence of Animals and the Environment) is the president of Federcaccia, Massimo Buconi. A rule - they explain at Federcaccia - that, if approved, would equate horses, donkeys and mules with dogs and cats, effectively banning their productive use and food consumption.

"After the rabbit, it is now the horse that is being brought to the attention of Italians as a new pet,' commented Federcaccia president Massimo Buconi, 'banning and sanctioning its consumption. The method is the usual one: leveraging emotions to launch yet another attack on rurality and its traditions'.

Federcaccia has decided to intervene in the debate despite the fact that the horse is notoriously not a huntable species and therefore not directly part of hunting interests. Our intervention,' they add at Federcaccia, 'is in defence of an integrated rural ecosystem. The horse is the fulcrum of an inestimable historical and folkloristic heritage, ranging from the great popular events such as the Palio di Siena - not by chance always under attack by animal rights activists - to the local gastronomic traditions that characterise entire regions of Italia, from Lombardy to Veneto to Puglia. Transforming by law the horse or one of its 'cousins' into a 'member of the drawing room' means severing the millenary bond between man, animal and land.

Despite the fact that the bill envisages facilitations for the transition of livestock farms to other forms of employment, the damage to the production sector seems inevitable. 'Without the zootechnical chain and the economic value linked to breeding,' Buconi emphasises, 'the very interest in breeding and raising these animals would be lost. The paradox is served: in the name of ideological protection, the horse would end up becoming a rare animal, a luxury good (even in the countryside and not only, as it already is, in the cities) that very few could afford to maintain, disappearing from our countryside and from the daily lives of ordinary people. Moreover, opening the door to the consumption of its meat imported from countries with lower safety and care standards than ours, or worse, clandestine'.

Federcaccia therefore reiterates that true animal protection passes through the enhancement of controlled supply chains and respect for rural traditions, not through bans that ignore the economic and cultural reality of the country. "The hope," Buconi concludes, "that this bill remains just the umpteenth ideological forcing of a party that, despite the propagandistic statements, remains decidedly a minority among Italians and their parliamentary representatives, is in this case certainly not a category defence, but a clear and for us sacrosanct protection of rural identity and Italian livestock biodiversity.